It can happen. Caches of treasure and artifacts spanning multiple eras have been found before. We aren’t the first people to collect antiquities.
One of the hallmarks of science is that it’s a peer review business. So far, you have one guy talking to a reporter, so there’s no science here yet.
As other have said, even if it pans out, at most it’s an interesting footnote to the history of North America.
That’s nothing. There’s an ancient Egyptian temple in the middle of New York City. It’s right there in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
My point is that in order to attach significance to the location of an ancient artifact, you have to know the circumstances of its discovery.
The Canadian government has stopped all excavation work at Oak Island. The place resembles a WWI “No Man’s Land”-it is a Swiss cheese of holes, pits, and dugout areas. If there ever was a “money pit”, it has long since been destroyed by >200 years of random digging.
Yes, it can happen. But it seems way more implausible that a roman sword would be found by a Norseman and then lost by him in the Americas than that it was brought by someone living in the Roman empire during the Roman era.
Why?
Useful artifacts (coins, tools, jewelry, etc.) get passed from hand to hand and often land far from their place of manufacture. For example, the Furness Hoard found in Cumbria, England, in 2011 included several Arabic coins amongst the Viking silver, but nobody (well, at least nobody sensible) posits Arabs running around the north of England in the tenth century. The Vikings liked silver, and the coins were silver and portable. What’s so implausible about swords being treated likewise?
shrug you said you didn’t see how. I just mentioned one way it was possible. Not necessarily likely.
It seems more likely to me that it is either a fake, or not as old as it is purported to be, or perhaps real, but the story of its finding fake, or that it was only moved to the location in comparatively modern times.
Coins were fungible back then, easy to carry too. A useless heavy sword-like item?
Provenance?
This has about as much provenance as the rock in my pocket that was the one David used to kill Goliath and Kaiser Bill personally gave my grandfather.
In a pre-gunpowder society, though, a “sword-like item” isn’t useless; it’s pretty much standard equipment for somebody venturing into foreign parts. Beyond that, in a world where the nearest hardware merchant isn’t down at the end of the block, any kind of metal is valuable and hoarded. “Swords into plowshares” is a metaphor, but converting random hunks of metal into whatever kind of tool might be needed is a useful skill. (Plus, genuine bronze swords only weigh about two to three pounds anyway, so we’re not talking some monstrous weight.)
But you see- that’s NOT a sword. It’s not useful at all as a weapon, and it’s pretty clear it was never used as one.
You mean The Thirteenth Warrior lied to me?
Damn you Banderas!
Sadly any supposed archaeological discovery involving the “History” channel is suspect in the extreme. Nowadays they either peddle out and out fantasy (Ancent Aliens and such) or clearly stage very suspect archaeological shows where some amazing world-changin archeological discovery happens not with years of painstaking research and digging, but right in front of your eyes in the course of a one hour special.
We’re talking about a 1000 old sword, that would be extremely likely not to be in any shape to be used as a weapon, and in case it would be, would not be adapted to the fighting style, defensive equipment, etc… of the time. And on top of it in this particular case, it would be a bronze sword. The northman was about as likely to bring it for its usefulness as, say, someone going to Somalia nowadays would be to bring an arquebus for self-defense.
And I’m sure indeed that people hoarded metal. But “swords into plowshares”, indeed.
The metal of this sword would have long been melted into something else. Unless you posit that this sword was on top of it considered to be some sacred artifact worth being preserved for centuries (and for some reason brought across the Atlantic rather than kept at the temple/palace/whatever. Or that the northman at the contrary just randomly found and old sword while plowing his field and somehow decided he would probably need a chunk of old metal during his ventures across the ocean.
I really can’t see a scenario where a genuine Roman sword being brought to the Americas by a Northman is even remotely as likely as it being brought during Roman times.
Also fungible and shipped around en-masse. Just the thing you’d expect to find in the UK, where blacksmiths pre-emptively made and stockpiled ,warehoused, many many such items before orders were received.
And where did the vikings also go ? UK !. And NORTH SEA ! What would be on the North Sea ? boats carrying stuff like that.
Besides, it could also have been made in, or due to learning from, Asia (china, vietnam … ) The people of Borneo had two unique cultural aspects…
- Travelled by boat long distances (polynesians are from Borneo originally.)
2.Took bronze Drums with them to various places. (the bronze drums can be linked by their decorations and design.)
I could swear I made a post about human sacrifice in the land across the Pond. But I can’t find it now. Anyhow
If memory serves, the druids and others spent some time treating the sacrifice like royalty (fine garments, no manual labor, no dirt under your fingernails etc) before killing them and dumping them in peat bogs. This isn’t the case I was thinking of but here’s Lindow Man
Re Stonehenge
According to Evangeline Walton’s take on the Welsh Mabinogion Saga, before Arthurian legends, the stones were believed to be the petrified bodies of the first human tribe to walk the earth.
Swords were expensive, and an old crappy bronze sword is much better than a dagger or no sword at all. So it’s not implausible that somebody would carry this one (assuming it had been a real sword instead of what seems to be a fairly recent replica) having no better option.
I’m convinced otherwise, but I’ve already stated my arguments, and couldn’t do more than repeat myself. So, let’s agree to disagree.
38 posts and nobody has mentioned this?
The Master Speaks
OK, I admit it’s 29 years old. Does not seem like a lot has changed.
If this is true, there was a MUCH bigger story than the sword that got missed entirely.